Radical Vision by Soyica Diggs Colbert

Author:Soyica Diggs Colbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300245707
Publisher: Yale University Press

SEPARATISM

Although today it is difficult to imagine an alternative economic system to capitalism, in 1960, the world weighed its options. In 1959, the Cuban revolution, led by Fidel Castro, resulted in a socialist Cuba. Additionally, much to the dismay of the British and American empires, 1960 marked the year of African independence. Mary L. Dudziak writes: “Between January and November of that year, seventeen African nations achieved independence. A total of twenty-five former colonies on the continent had now been liberated. Eighty more would follow while Kennedy was in office.”39 The fierce winds of the Cold War spurred on desires and freedom dreams of Black people. Days before John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, Hansberry remarked, “What are we faced with. We are faced with the fact that due to these three hundred years of the experience of black people in the Western Hemisphere, not only the United States, that a possible difference of ultimate cultural attitude now exists as a reality. So that there are the tones now of Negro nationalism articulated in a far more sophisticated and pointed way than perhaps years ago. Where the question is openly being raised today among all Negro intellectuals and among all politically conscious Negros . . . is it necessary to integrate oneself into a burning house?”40 Hansberry describes a widespread consideration among Negroes of political systems that do not depend on Black people to resuscitate America or the idea of democracy. She understood this questioning as a part of an international conversation that puts pressure on American exceptionalism, which underpins the operation of U.S. democracy. Her comment underpins the debates about integration or segregation that drove James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Hansberry, similar to Baldwin, opted to continue with the American experiment, believing that the mass movements of Black people around the world had the potential to redeem America too.

Situating herself squarely within the fight for Black liberation through self-determination, Hansberry’s participation in the radio symposium on January 20 was one appearance among many that she advocated for Black people becoming free by any means necessary. Her assertion of these ideas, ones that she expressed in her writing for Freedom, made it more difficult to reconcile the public self she crafted through her speech acts with her media image. Hansberry evidenced the national and international scope of what she called “the movement” in the next sentence of her comments, saying, “There are real and true things existing in the consciousness of Negroes today that have to do with why on two different occasions the Negro delegate of the United Nations will disassociate herself from her government when we refuse to vote for Algeria, an Algerian Algeria, when we refuse to vote for the end of colonialism, that the most compromised element from which these people are drawn, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to represent us, when they are moved to disassociate themselves in an international hall.”41 The United Nations not only functioned as the site of international governance—it was

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